Bagged ice has been popular to be used in portable coolers to chill canned and bottled beverages, where the bags generally comprise loose ice cubes, chips, that are frozen fresh water. The user places the bag(s) in coolers and adds canned and/or bottled beverages, to the coolers of packaged-ice.
Due to the melting properties of fresh-water ice, canned and bottled beverages placed in ice cannot be chilled below 32 degrees Fahrenheit for any significant length of time, which is the known general freezing point.
Ice-melters such as salt have been known to be used to lower the melting point of fresh-water ice. Sprinkling loose salt on packed-ice in a cooler to produce lower temperatures for canned and bottled beverages placed inside. Sprinkling salt has been tried with beer, since beer will not freeze at 32 degrees due to its alcohol content. However, sprinkling loose salt has problems.
Due to the uneven spread of salt on ice, it is impossible to know or control the precise resulting temperate below 32 degrees on various ice-cubes in the cooler obtained by sprinkling of salt. Salt sprinkling has resulted in some beverages “freezing hard” while others remain liquid and sometimes at above 32 degrees. The spreading of salt or other ice-melters on packaged-ice in a cooler to obtain temperatures less than 32 degrees is impractical to know and control precisely the resulting temperature of ice-cubes in a cooler environment
Some devices rely on traditional refrigeration and/or placing ice inside the beverage to obtain cold temperatures. At home devices such as SODASTREAM® by Soda-Club (CO2) Atlantic GmbH, and KEURIG COLD™ by Keurig Green Mountain Inc. rely on basic methods for cooling, and each has drawbacks.
Traditional refrigeration offers a relatively slow and inefficient method of cooling, requiring hours to obtain approximately 40 F drinking temperatures.
Ice inside of liquid is also popular to cool beverages. However, placing ice inside a liquid has the drawbacks of: 1) watered-down flavoring, 2) introducing impurities, 3) causing premature de-carbonation of carbonated beverages.
Non-traditional method of cooling cans/bottles rapidly by spinning on their axis while the can/bottle is in contact with ice or ‘ice-cold’ liquid (usually fresh water at or near approximately 32 deg-F) was also attempted. U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,054 to Loibl et al. describes beverage cooling that attempts to reduce beverage cooling times from hours to close to a minute without putting ice inside.
SPINCHILL™, www.spinchill.com use portable type drills with a suction cup to attach to a canned beverage with ‘cooling times’ of 60 seconds or less for canned beverages spun at roughly 450 rpm in a standard ice-cooler containing ice and/or iced-water, though the term ‘cooling’ is used loosely and generally describes a beverage temperature between 40-50 F or so.
Some non-traditional beverage cooling devices generally spin cans/bottles at a constant rpm (revolutions per minute) rate in one-direction only, and expose the can/bottle again and again to ice or cold liquid to rapidly cool the beverage.
These devices seek to minimize agitation inside the canned or bottled beverage by spinning them at relatively mild rates of 350-500 rpm which, they believe, is optimal for rapid cooling and prevents undesirable foaming of carbonated beverages and beer.
These devices require up to several minutes of spinning in a cooling medium to obtain ‘ice-cold’ drinking temperatures, and do not automatically indicate when a beverage has reached optimal or lowest drinking temperature.
Alcoholic and non-alcoholic bottled and canned beverages of all varieties, including bottled water, has been known to be super cooled below 32 deg-F while remaining liquid for short periods of time. What is not generally known is how to cool these beverages rapidly to precise super cooled temperatures which allow for enjoyable ‘slush-on-demand’ drinking experiences while preventing unwanted or premature freezing which results in undesirable effects such as 1) premature foaming or release of carbonation in an undesirable way, and 2) hard frozen or ‘chunky’ frozen beverages which are difficult to consume.
Prior art does not describe supercooling beverages below 32-degrees and/or below their freezing point while keeping a liquid state allowing previously impossible beverage options, such as creating instant milkshakes from super cooled milk beverages and creating instant smoothies from super cooled fruit and vegetable juices without the need to blend-in chopped-ice into the smoothie.
Supercooled beverages are increasingly popular due to the ability to create instant “slushy drinks” by nucleating the supercooled beverage and causing instant soft ice-crystal formation throughout the beverage. Traditional methods for nucleating supercooled liquid beverages involve 1) disturbing the beverage container via shaking, slamming, or hitting the beverage container with enough force to cause ice-crystals to begin forming, or 2) opening the beverage container and exposing the liquid to air and then disturbing the liquid in hopes of creating a nucleation site for ice crystals to being forming. Another method for nucleating supercooled beverages involves opening the beverage and pouring the supercooled liquid into a cup or glass containing seed crystals of ice, which starts the nucleation process and creates an instant slushy drink in a glass. Of all of these methods, none of them can reliably and consistently cause nucleation-on-demand for all varieties of supercooled beverages in sealed containers without the containers being opened.
For example, if a supercooled carbonated beverage is purchased from a vending machine or merchandiser, there are limited options to start the nucleation process. Shaking or slamming may cause the desired ice-crystal nucleation of the beverage, but can also cause unwanted foaming due to the carbonation within the beverage. So choices are limited to exposing it to air (opening the beverage) which has a high probability of failure in inducing ice-crystal nucleation or pouring the liquid into a glass containing ice crystals which may be undesirable or impractical in many point of purchase situations.
Furthermore, due to the temperatures required for nucleation to occur, users have roughly 90-120 seconds to begin the ice-crystal nucleation process once the beverage is removed from the supercooled refrigerated environment of a typical home freezer or that of a specialized merchandiser or vending machine, or the supercooled beverage may become too warm for ice-crystal nucleation to occur. Ideally, the supercooled beverage should either be nucleated before being dispensed by the vending machine, or by the consumer immediately upon removing the beverage from the specialized supercooling merchandiser or vending machine without having to open the bottle/can and with no unwanted foaming occurring when opening the container.
In addition, the ice-crystal nucleation process can be spectacular and exciting to watch inside of a see-through bottle, and the ability to illuminate or back-light the liquid during ice-crystal nucleation can add significant visual excitement for the consumer at the point of purchase as well as a convenient way to verify that the ice-crystal nucleation or ‘slushing’ process was successful.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.